Huawei to double its European staff to 14,000 workers

Controversial Chinese telco hardware maker will also open R&D center in Finland.

After being lambasted in the halls of Congress in recent months, Chinese telecoms vendor Huawei said on Monday that it is planning to double its European workforce. The company also said it will create a new research center in Finland, the home of mobile giant Nokia.

"Europe has proven to be quite an open business environment for Huawei," company spokesman Roland Sladek told Reuters on Monday.

The Chinese firm said it would ramp up hiring, to about 14,000 workers across Europe within three to five years, and would spend €70 million ($91 million) on its new facility. In September 2012, Huawei had previously announced an R&D investment of $2 billion in the United Kingdom.

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar

17 Reader Comments

So, we have Elop, MS trojan horse, nuking Nokia in order to get the patents cheap (or perhaps just that MS likes ruining other companies). Then Huawei will hire people that Nokia got rid off on the way to bankruptcy and soon we will have bunch of people whining about Chinese stealing our secrets and knowledge.

What ever the fault with Chinese it is not being short sighted like the west.

(That pressure hasn’t stopped the company from eyeing potential lucrative deals in countries with less scrupulous leadership, like Syria.)

What exactly makes Syria less scrupulous than the government of USA?

You must live somewhere without access to Google, as a simple search would tell you what you want to know. I would start with Authoritarian leadership and state sponsored terrorism. Clearly, no better than the US.

(That pressure hasn’t stopped the company from eyeing potential lucrative deals in countries with less scrupulous leadership, like Syria.)

What exactly makes Syria less scrupulous than the government of USA?

You must live somewhere without access to Google, as a simple search would tell you what you want to know. I would start with Authoritarian leadership and state sponsored terrorism. Clearly, no better than the US.

You mean state sponsored terrorism like invading Iraq without proper cause, sending drones to kill civilians, exonerating soldiers who goes on a kiling rampage? Or authoritarian like the president being able to have a kill list?

(That pressure hasn’t stopped the company from eyeing potential lucrative deals in countries with less scrupulous leadership, like Syria.)

What exactly makes Syria less scrupulous than the government of USA?

You must live somewhere without access to Google, as a simple search would tell you what you want to know. I would start with Authoritarian leadership and state sponsored terrorism. Clearly, no better than the US.

You mean state sponsored terrorism like invading Iraq without proper cause, sending drones to kill civilians, exonerating soldiers who goes on a kiling rampage? Or authoritarian like the president being able to have a kill list?

So you saying you do have Google, but only read headlines? Or is it simply the fact you don't what authoritarianism or terrorism is?

(That pressure hasn’t stopped the company from eyeing potential lucrative deals in countries with less scrupulous leadership, like Syria.)

What exactly makes Syria less scrupulous than the government of USA?

You must live somewhere without access to Google, as a simple search would tell you what you want to know. I would start with Authoritarian leadership and state sponsored terrorism. Clearly, no better than the US.

You mean state sponsored terrorism like invading Iraq without proper cause, sending drones to kill civilians, exonerating soldiers who goes on a kiling rampage? Or authoritarian like the president being able to have a kill list?

In Syria, the president is the son of the former president, and he wasn't really elected. Instead there was a sham election where the real winner didn't become president. And after that president is finally removed from office, he will be replaced by a muslim fanatic who wants to control everybody's lives.

(That pressure hasn’t stopped the company from eyeing potential lucrative deals in countries with less scrupulous leadership, like Syria.)

What exactly makes Syria less scrupulous than the government of USA?

You must live somewhere without access to Google, as a simple search would tell you what you want to know. I would start with Authoritarian leadership and state sponsored terrorism. Clearly, no better than the US.

You mean state sponsored terrorism like invading Iraq without proper cause, sending drones to kill civilians, exonerating soldiers who goes on a kiling rampage? Or authoritarian like the president being able to have a kill list?

So you saying you do have Google, but only read headlines? Or is it simply the fact you don't what authoritarianism or terrorism is?

I know what they are:

terrorism: when brown people defend their own rightsauthoritarianism: a government form that's not a sham republic like USA

So, we have Elop, MS trojan horse, nuking Nokia in order to get the patents cheap (or perhaps just that MS likes ruining other companies). Then Huawei will hire people that Nokia got rid off on the way to bankruptcy and soon we will have bunch of people whining about Chinese stealing our secrets and knowledge. What ever the fault with Chinese it is not being short sighted like the west.

Mr. Elop is doing a fine job of rectifying what was a difficult strategic quandary at Nokia. (Disclosure: I currently hold a few hundred US dollars worth of Nokia shares — I bought in a few days ago, mainly because I'm impressed with the strategy Elop is running, and I believe it will work. I'm also impressed with Nokia's new designs and unique phone features, such as their clear advantage in built-in photo technology.) Nokia has real potential.

Quote:

(Huawei) also said it will create a new research center in Finland...

Huawei's move is a direct challenge to Nokia. It sets Huawei in direct competition with Nokia for key technical & management staff (and remember, Finland has less than 6M people, total). If the world map was a chess-board, and telecoms facilities were the pieces; this would be considered a very aggressive move — almost like a precursor to a "check-mate" manoeuvre. If Huawei didn't see a resurgent Nokia as a potential threat, then why would they do this? It's a totally deliberate manoeuvre. If they succeed in killing Nokia, be prepared for them to move their facilities next door to their next main competitor — they wouldn't be doing any special favours to the Finnish government in that case.By the way, patents are not the same as trade secrets (quite the opposite, unless the lawyers are highly skilled at obfuscating their contents from the cognizance of competitors' analysts & engineers)...

So, we have Elop, MS trojan horse, nuking Nokia in order to get the patents cheap (or perhaps just that MS likes ruining other companies). Then Huawei will hire people that Nokia got rid off on the way to bankruptcy and soon we will have bunch of people whining about Chinese stealing our secrets and knowledge. What ever the fault with Chinese it is not being short sighted like the west.

Mr. Elop is doing a fine job of rectifying what was a difficult strategic quandary at Nokia. (Disclosure: I currently hold a few hundred US dollars worth of Nokia shares — I bought in a few days ago, mainly because I'm impressed with the strategy Elop is running, and I believe it will work. I'm also impressed with Nokia's new designs and unique phone features, such as their clear advantage in built-in photo technology.) Nokia has real potential.

Quote:

(Huawei) also said it will create a new research center in Finland...

Huawei's move is a direct challenge to Nokia. It sets Huawei in direct competition with Nokia for key technical & management staff (and remember, Finland has less than 6M people, total). If the world map was a chess-board, and telecoms facilities were the pieces; this would be considered a very aggressive move — almost like a precursor to a "check-mate" manoeuvre. If Huawei didn't see a resurgent Nokia as a potential threat, then why would they do this? It's a totally deliberate manoeuvre. If they succeed in killing Nokia, be prepared for them to move their facilities next door to their next main competitor — they wouldn't be doing any special favours to the Finnish government in that case.By the way, patents are not the same as trade secrets (quite the opposite, unless the lawyers are highly skilled at obfuscating their contents from the cognizance of competitors' analysts & engineers)...

Mr. Elop is the one that nuked Nokia. You might not believe it but symbian was doing well and bringing in billions in profit and nokia had a huge following outside of US (imagine that, a world outside of US ). Elop killed off symbian for no good reason what so ever and at the same time basically told all the customers to get fucked. So nokia went from being houshold name when buying a phone to being a joke and that company that fucked all it's customers and then had the nerve to try and sell them symbian phones that they had announced will not be supported.On top of that you have the whole N9 thing, where he blocked it's sale as he wanted to push windows craphone.

As to the topic, Huawei sees cheap people being available as nokia is going down. Considering the behaviour by nokia I would not be surprised if people would be more than happy to jump the sinking ship and idiotic leadership.

...Mr. Elop is the one that nuked Nokia. You might not believe it but Symbian was doing well and bringing in billions in profit and Nokia had a huge following outside of US... Elop killed off Symbian for no good reason what so ever... So Nokia went from being household name when buying a phone to being a joke ... and then had the nerve to try and sell them Symbian phones that they had announced will not be supported...As to the topic, Huawei sees cheap people being available as nokia is going down. Considering the behaviour by nokia I would not be surprised if people would be more than happy to jump the sinking ship and idiotic leadership.

I currently use a Nokia/Symbian phone (purchased 2–5 years ago), and I can tell you that the reason I do so is not because the OS is excellent or ergonomically ideal. It might have been bringing money in off the back of previous development investments, but it was a technological dead-end. The reasons I still use Symbian are:

Nokia was first to market with smart-phones. They invented them. So I got acquainted with this mobile operating system first. I know its foibles and how to work around them. I know by experience that the phone's most serious bugs (always present in early models of anything) have already been ironed out, and that the phones will at least work for basic things like phonecalls and SMS messages. Nokia/Symbian phones were on 3G with email and web browsing built-in for many years before Apple even offered a 2G phone...

Symbian smart-phones were recently very cheap. My current phone is a 2G bottom-of-the-range model purchased for £45GBP unlocked including postage and packing. It has FM radio and numerous other features. I wasn't satisfied with the other options on the market at the time, and bought this one to keep me going until I see something more satisfactory. I'm not going to spend £300–£550 on a phone that has inaccurate mapping software, or insecure ΟS, or which comes with a limited lifetime battery that's difficult to exchange, or which comes preconfigured as a tracking device that sells my whereabouts on a minute-by-minute basis to the highest bidder, or which is limited to 2G outside of North America, or which has bugs in time-zone/ daylight savings/ other calendrical information which affect alarms and appointments, or which cannot pick up Glonass signals when I'm visiting Russia so that the geolocation & navigation is hopeless in northerly latitudes, or where I have to press a button that makes a raucous noise in order to switch on "silent mode" like I had to on my old Motorola, or which wakes me up in the middle of the night to tell me the battery is going flat or some "friend" I haven't seen in years has a birthday, or where I can't set an automated schedule (integrated with my business calendar) for the phone to switch between "silent"/"meeting"/"general" profiles, or which performs uncommanded deletions/duplications/amendments of contacts & appointments when synchronized with my PC, or which has a hazy plastic lens with horrible colour aberrations on top of an "8 megapixel CCD"; or which has any other serious flaws or deficiencies where the manufacturer effectively tells me I've got to shell out another £500 to get the next model up that fixes these known issues. I'm simply not on the market for an expensive "smart-phone" again until I see a phone that works. Until then, I'm sticking to my £45 Symbian, and swapping out the battery from time to time.

So Symbian is cheap; and cheap, fully featured phones sell in great numbers (with a small profit-margin, and high risk of market disruption from competitors). As demonstrated by Apple and others, "cheap" is not necessarily the best or only strategy for turning a profit, or for ensuring the continued existence of your company in a competitive market. You need to hit that sweet-spot between: